Summary: Ichigo wanted to feel bad, wanted to feel the need to explain himself, to apologize, but he couldn't quite collect the urgency to do any of that. He'd lived so long, lived so many lives, that he'd long since stopped apologizing for his actions, let alone explaining them to the confused individuals around him. Implied Aizen/ichigo; Time Loop/Time Travel AU
I got this idea while at work; an ichigo who is stuck in some type of time loop. he's probably not all that sane at this point, especially since he's willfully ignoring what exactly aizen did/is going to do, but he's been fighting yhwach for so damn long that he no longer cares.
Something New, Something Different
Ichigo wanted to feel bad, wanted to feel the need to explain himself, to apologize, but he couldn't quite collect the urgency to do any of that. He'd lived so long, lived so many lives, that he'd long since stopped apologizing for his actions, let alone explaining them to the confused individuals around him.
His first life wasn't bad, but it came with plenty of heartbreak. He trained so hard, for what seems like so long, to finally beat Aizen. He had accepted the fact that he would lose his powers, stop hearing his zanpaktou, and stop seeing ghost. He hadn't quite thought about the empty feeling he would have afterwards. The loneliness as his friends ran off. The burning anger when those same friends avoided his eyes, stopped talking when he entered the room, or when they ignored his texts and calls. The way his family drifted away from him. Yuzu growing, Karin suddenly disappearing, and his dad never around.
He lives his life, goes to college, meets a girl, and he settles down. He grows old and on his death bed, he's so deliriously happy that finally—finally—he's going to go back to Soul Society. He's going to see friends he's missed and he's going to grip his zanpaktou in his hands once more.
Instead, he wakes up right after he defeats Aizen. He's disoriented, confused, as he watches Aizen scream at Urahara. He wonders if the life he just lived was a hallucination of some kind. Possibly an illusion Aizen casted upon him? He's shaking as Urahara approaches. Everything goes how it did in his—vision?—and when his friends start pulling away, he realizes he doesn't want the life he had before. He waited decades to get his powers back, he won't wait any longer.
And then he meets Ginjō Kūgo and he thinks yes, finally, because Ichigo isn't holding Zangetsu in his hands, but he finally has some type of goal to look forward to. He has power in his hands once more and it makes him realize how dead he had been before. How dull life had been in his vision without the ability to fight and protect.
Things don't go quite as planned, of course, because suddenly he's fighting Ginjō and the captains appear and he's finally wielding Zangetsu once more. It's a rush, a brilliant euphoric dream, to finally feel right. He hasn't felt this in what feels like so long and the adrenaline rushing through him feels fantastic. He fights and he wins.
Then everything slowly starts to unravel and things go to shit. There are Quincy now, long thought almost wiped out, Ishida has betrayed them, and Ichigo is watching in agony as Yhwach destroys soul society while he lays dying, doing nothing.
He wakes up right as Urahara is binding Aizen and the relieved breath he exhales leaves his lungs burning. He can work with this. It sucks, going back to square one, but now he knows that there's even something bigger he needs to train and fight for. He gets stronger quicker and takes care of things before they get out of hand.
He still loses. He still watches as Soul Society is destroyed.
He lives that life over and over again, always losing in the end, no matter how strong he gets. He goes through so many lives that he stops counting. It feels like an inevitability, like he's always meant to lose, and he never stops trying, but there's a desperation that clouds his every action. He gets so depressed that, as much as he hates to admit it, he spends several of the next lives ignoring everything. He doesn't help the Shinigami, he doesn't fight, he just pretends to not have his powers, pretends to not see anything, because he's so tired.
He starts to try again, mostly because he feels guilty, and he's abruptly shaken out of his melancholy when instead of it just being him and Renji against Yhwach, Aizen suddenly shows up. It throws him off and he dies before he can see Soul Society destroyed. It stays with him though. This time when he wakes up and he sees an enraged Aizen screaming at Urahara, he doesn't look away.
This is the first deviating point. This is the first time that something different happened without Ichigo changing anything. He clings to it, makes every decision he made through the last life just so he can see Aizen standing there. He lives longer this time because he has to live in order to watch Aizen. To watch something new happen.
He doesn't count how many lives he spends waiting and watching Aizen. He eventually starts changing small things, trying to figure out what the trigger point is; what makes Aizen show up? He doesn't ever really figure it out, but he doesn't care. He clings to those moments when he appears. He has different conversations with him while fighting Yhwach, something that throws both Renji and Aizen off. Ichigo will greet him, no surprise in his voice at seeing him out of his chair, and soon enough he knows what to say to get a reluctantly amused look from the man.
Ichigo is a little scared that it's Aizen he's latched on to, that it's his presence that keeps Ichigo going strong into life after life, but he soon starts to lose that concern. It's been so many years since he's actually had to fight the man that it starts to fade from his mind. He always appears after Aizen has been sealed by Urahara, so there's never any fighting, just him staring intently at a struggling mad man.
He starts to get to know him, starts to learn his mannerisms and ticks, and Ichigo hates that he finds it fascinating. He should be putting his all into trying to figure out how to beat Yhawch, but nothing ever works, so he starts half-assing it. Instead, he watches Aizen trick Yhwach several different ways, admiring the cunning he had once disdained so heavily. Seeing Aizen starts to bring a warm feeling to his chest.
He watches Aizen with warm eyes as he dies and when he opens them again, he's in Urahara's shop. He's disoriented when he wakes because this isn't right. He should be breathing in charged air, dust swirling around him, as Aizen's disdainful screams crash around him like waves. Instead, there's a still silence. He's bandaged up and when he looks at his hands, something feels wrong. This isn't right, he knows. This is a major deviation from the pattern of lives he's been living and he doesn't understand.
It takes some thinking, some niggling memories almost completely faded, before he realizes that Rukia has just been taken back to the Soul Society for execution on the charges of giving her powers to a human. Ichigo stares at his hands, his mind racing. This is so long ago, so far in his past, that Ichigo struggles to remember how he even acted, how the others around him helped him. He needs to go after Rukia, of course, that hasn't changed, but there's more that he has to do.
He feels a stirring in his mind and he's jolted at the notion that he still has Zangetsu and the old man. He can hear Zangetsu cursing in his mind, as well as the old man's confused, but comforting presence. Ichigo shouldn't have either of them, he just lost his powers. He starts to vibrate with adrenaline because this is the biggest change that has happened in what must be decades. He has his powers from the future. He has knowledge and the strength to get ahead of what's to come. Ichigo can change things.
A flash of brown eyes and brown hair sweeps across his mind and it gives him pause. In the last year or so of the lives he lived, Aizen had been a constant at the final battle against Yhwach. His shikai ability had worked to their advantage multiple times. The man was a genius and his intellect had come up with more than one alternative plan. They'd gotten incredibly close, once or twice, to finally ending it.
Ichigo needed Aizen there to defeat Yhwach. Ichigo needed him there from the beginning. He hesitated briefly at the way his thoughts were going. Could he go to Soul Society on the pretense of rescuing Rukia and then…side with Aizen? It sounded absolutely absurd. He would be betraying all of his friends and they wouldn't even know why. They wouldn't even suspect it. Ichigo being a turncoat would make no sense, especially after Aizen extracts the Hougyoku and almost kills Rukia. It would throw Aizen for a hell of a loop as well.
Ichigo realizes he's stopped breathing at one point and he pulls a painful breath into his burning lungs. He doesn't want to feel the elation at the idea that he has more time with Aizen, that he has a chance to put all of his years of observation to use, but he can't muster the strength to fight it. He feels bad for his friends, in the vague sense that they're going to be hurt by his actions in the upcoming future, but he must not feel that bad about it because he's already made up his mind.
He's going to join Aizen.
Ichigo involuntarily smiles, a small thing that is there one second and then gone the next. Ichigo felt excitement build in his chest. This was new, this was different, and Ichigo was looking forward to it. He couldn't wait.
hope you enjoyed whatever the hell this was